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Electrical Gating of Nanochannels of Polyelectrolyte Brushes

Moghaddasi Fereidani, Roya | 2015

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  1. Type of Document: M.Sc. Thesis
  2. Language: Farsi
  3. Document No: 47425 (04)
  4. University: Sharif University of Technology
  5. Department: Physics
  6. Advisor(s): Ejtehadi, Mohammad Reza
  7. Abstract:
  8. The nuclear pore complex mediates all transport between the cell cytoplasm and the nucleus. Being inspired by this biological system, in this project we intended to design an artificial gate by using polyelectrolyte brushes in a cylindrical nanochannel, which will be opened by applying a tangent electrical field and will close by eliminating the field. Grafted polyelecrolyte brushes have the potential to be useful for the design of advanced gating systems for many applications like functional and conrolleble MEMS devices. In order to design the desired gating system we have employed the ESPResSo software to conduct a coarse-grained molecular dynamics simulation in NVT ensemble to simulate polyelectrolyte brushes grafted inside a cylindrical pore in presence of a tangent electric field and also shear flow. We compared the static properties of polyelectrolytes such as radius of gyration and end-to-end distance, as well as velocity profiles of particles in addition to ion distribution within the solvent in both cases of open and closed gate, and saw the structural changes of the polyelectrolyte brushes in the nanochannel. In the absence of electrical field, polyelectrolytes tend to have coil-like structures which will help to close the gate. However, in the presence of electrical field, polyelectrolytes will elongate parallel to the field’s direction along the nanochannel and will make the gate open
  9. Keywords:
  10. Nano Channel ; Molecular Dynamics ; Electrical Field ; Coarse Grained Model ; Gating System ; Polyelectrolyte Brushes

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